Özet:

In this study, it has been tried to reveal how the two major parties, the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Democratic Party (DP), which left their mark on a period, reacted differently to the same kind of events based on the press, according to their positions in power and opposition. 1950 Eskişehir and 1958 Çankırı flood disasters were taken as samples. First, the damages of the mentioned flood disasters were revealed, and then the reflections of the disasters on the press and their flows in the public opinion within the political conjuncture of the period were discussed. We can consider the reflection of the flood disasters in Eskişehir and Çankırı to the press in two different ways. The first is in terms of the official media organs of political parties, and the other is in terms of the evaluations of the press, which has somehow been engaged in politics but has not become guided. Again, we can divide the view of the official media organs of the parties on the disaster into two parts. Accordingly, we can classify Ulus, the official media organ of the ruling party, CHP, on the one side, Zafer, the official media organ of the opposition party DP, and Kudret, the media organ of the Millet Party (MP), on the other side in terms of their approach to events. In the study; Periodicals, assembly minutes and archive documents of the period were taken as the basis, and original works were also used in the analysis. The questions such as “Do the media organs of political parties fulfill the primary duty of the press?”, “Are natural disasters exploited by political parties?”, and “Does criticizing disasters and seeking a responsible hurt national unity and integrity?” were tried to be answered. As a result of the study, it was seen that national disasters were exploited by opposition political parties for the sake of gaining more votes beyond the principle of free criticism and review, which is the basic principle of democracy.